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The Orioles handed out bowling shirts today to the first 15,000 fans. Zach Eflin didn’t spare the White Sox, but when would the offense strike?
It took until the bottom of the sixth inning, when the Orioles loaded the bases with no outs and scored twice on a sacrifice fly and double steal. They didn’t offer much support and little was needed.
Eflin shut out the White Sox over seven innings and the Orioles began the series with a 2-1 win before an announced crowd of 22,108 at Camden Yards.
Félix Bautista surrendered two doubles in the ninth inning, the second by Andrew Benintendi with two outs. Luis Robert Jr. walked with the count full in an eight-pitch at-bat before Bautista nailed down his ninth save.
Disaster didn't strike.
Another injury did, however, with Ryan Mountcastle leaving in the top of the eighth inning due to right hamstring discomfort. Coby Mayo was scratched from Triple-A Norfolk's lineup and he's headed to Baltimore in case a roster move is necessary.
The game time was bumped up 2 ½ hours due to a pending storm and flood warnings. At its conclusion, the Orioles had improved their record to 20-36 and the White Sox fell to 18-39 overall and 6-24 on the road.
And then it rained hard.
Adley Rutschman led off the sixth inning with a single and Gunnar Henderson lined a double down the left field line for his 400th career hit. He’s the sixth Orioles player to reach the mark before his 24th birthday, along with Manny Machado, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken Jr., Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell.
Rutschman and Henderson were a combined 0-for-10 in Wednesday’s loss to the Cardinals.
“It seems like it flew by," Henderson said of 400 hits. "It’ll sneak up on you, I guess. But it’s pretty cool to get that number.
“Those are some of the all-time greats. And, yeah, like you said, being in a sentence with them is pretty special and something that I’ll hold dear to me.”
Mountcastle reached on an infield hit, and Ramón Urías’ fly ball to right with one out broke the scoreless tie. Mountcastle increased the lead to 2-0 on the back end of a double steal with Ryan O’Hearn, the first Oriole to swipe home since Cedric Mullins on Aug. 12, 2021 against the Tigers.
Mountcastle's exit from the game moved O’Hearn from right field to first base, and Cooper Hummel went to right, becoming the 45th player used by the Orioles this season.
“Just right hamstring discomfort. They’ll evaluate it, they’ll check him out tomorrow. We’ll go from there," said interim manager Tony Mansolino.
Asked whether the double steal caused the injury, Mansolino replied, “I’m not quite sure yet. I’ll find out more. We just, during the game, P-Dub (assistant athletic trainer Patrick Wesley) came up and said the hamstring’s a little bit tight. Common sense, came out.”
The Orioles executed it perfectly, with Mountcastle breaking for home as catcher Edgar Quero fired to second.
“We do our homework obviously," Mansolino said. "We try to pick our spots and be smart as you can to watch the game unfold and realize that sometimes you’ve got to take some smart risks, I guess, is probably the best way to put it. We had an idea of what they would do. We took a shot. It worked out.”
"That was huge," Eflin said. "It's such a great play, especially at this level. It's something you kind of learn in high school, right? As soon as the catcher lets it go and you see it up in the air, you break for home and whatever happens, happens, right? And he beat it with flying colors, and it sucks to see him go down, come out the game, but it was a huge run for us and I can go out and pitch a little more freely after that and just had a lot of fun today.”
"That’s how you draw it up, I guess," O'Hearn said. "It was good, get us that extra run, which ended up winning the game for us there. So, huge.
"I feel like usually if it’s a steal-and-stop situation like that with the guy on third, usually they just fake the throw or they throw to third or something and then you just casually go to second and it’s no big deal. But when it works out like that, that’s awesome. Great call by Manso to get us that extra run there."
Eflin held the White Sox to four hits and struck out six batters in seven scoreless innings. He fanned Robert and Joshua Palacios in the seventh, leaving his pitch count at 99, after Miguel Vargas singled with one out and Benintendi drew the only walk against Eflin.
“His sinker was really good today," Mansolino said. "It seems like all of his misses were kind of below the zone in the right spots. I think that’s probably the biggest thing is I watched the misses a little bit, watched a couple innings as it went on on the iPad. It looks like the misses were in a good spot. Obviously, when the misses are up middle, it doesn’t go so well. It didn’t look that way today.”
Eflin retired 14 of the first 15 batters. Lenyn Sosa singled with one out in the third inning and Josh Rojas hit into a 1-6-3 double play. Eflin threw five pitches in the third and 11 in the fourth.
Quero and Sosa began the sixth with singles. Quero got caught in a rundown when Rutschman tried to pick him off second base – the official ruling is a caught stealing – and Eflin escaped.
"I think, for the most part, command," Eflin said when asked what was working. "Being able to get ahead of guys and I had a pretty good sinker today, so was able to get some soft contact early in the count and kind of get through four or five pretty efficiently. I thought Rutsch called a great game. Really just following his lead the whole time and doing my best to execute pitches and defense played a huge part.
"Rutsch was awesome in the sixth by getting that lead out at second. That's such a huge momentum shift for us. But defense played great. Offense did what we needed to do to win the game and bullpen shut it down.”
Eflin allowed 12 earned runs and 13 total over 10 1/3 innings in his last two starts, but he had a much better cutter today.
"I felt I threw it a lot more today with conviction than I did the last couple times I've thrown it," Eflin said. "More so I think the last couple outings, tried to place it where I wanted it to be as opposed to throw it through where I wanted to be. So I think just more so conviction today than anything.”
The change in the starting time wasn't a disruption to Eflin's routine.
"I found out as soon as I woke up, so there was no real change," he said. "Was able to get the kids up this morning and I left before I put them down for a nap, so that was the only change.”
The White Sox listed right-hander Sean Burke as their starter but switched to lefty Jaren Shuster as an opener. Shuster hit Jackson Holliday with his first pitch but retired the next three batters in a 17-pitch inning. Holliday was stranded on third base.
Burke was warming in the bullpen but Shuster returned for the second inning, gave up a leadoff single to O’Hearn and departed. He hadn’t gone more than 2 1/3 in his 10 relief appearances.
O’Hearn has reached base in a career-best 16 games in a row and 29 of 30.
The leadoff hitter reached in each of the first three innings but the game remained scoreless. Holliday grounded into a 3-6-3 double play in the third. Mountcastle singled with one out in the fourth and was stranded. Dylan Carlson walked with two outs in the fifth and Holliday struck out.
The Orioles finally broke through an inning later and they held on, missing by an out of their second shutout after Bryan Baker retired the side in order in the eighth. Bautista raised the tension level and some blood pressure readings. Robert almost homered to left field, the ball staying foul down the line.
“He’s been a little inconsistent here lately," Mansolino said. "I think that’s fair to say. I want to say his previous outing he came in, it was pretty lights out, and you feel like he’s picking up some momentum when he has those types of outings. And then he has the one today which, listen, you’ve got to give some guys credit, too. That could have gone south real quick, especially with how things have gone, and he hung in there, he battled, he got the big out when we needed it and here we are with the win.”
